Gala Banquet and Keynote Address
The traditional Saturday night Gala Banquet is an elegant evening of celebration, inspiration and community. The Saturday, January 24, 2009 event will be held in downtown Toronto at the prestigious Constitution Hall of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Formal or cultural dress is required for this event.
VIPs and members of the public are welcome to join Engineers Without Borders for this annual celebration. Please see our Gala Registration page for details.
The Gala Banquet will also feature a silent auction where delegates will be able to bid for a wide range of items, from new BlackBerries to special items brought back by EWB’s overseas interns in Africa.
6:15–7:15pm: Check-in, registration, silent auction, cash bar
7:15pm: Seating
7:30pm: Dinner and opening remarks
8:05pm: Keynote address - Neil Turok
9:30pm: Closing remarks
10:30pm: Post-gala party
Wine will be served with dinner, and a cash bar will be available. Dinner will include soup, salad and a main course of either Canadian prime rib or mushroom risotto (allocated based on dietary requirements).
For delegates of the Engineers Without Borders 2009 Annual Conference, attendance at the Gala Banquet and Keynote Address is included in the conference package. Transportation for all delegates will be provided from the Delta Meadowvale to the MTCC Constitution Hall before the Gala, and transportation back to the Delta will be available at staggered points throughout the evening.
After the keynote address and awards, delegates are welcome to remain in Constitution Hall for a celebration, return to the hotel, or venture out and explore Toronto’s nightlife (popular for many of our guests from across the country).
Keynote
Neil Turok
Executive Director, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario
Dr. Neil Turok earned his PhD at Imperial College and, in 1994, became a Professor of Physics at Princeton University. Among his many honours, he was awarded the 1992 James Clerk Maxwell medal of the U.K. Institute of Physics.
Dr. Turok has worked in a number of areas of theoretical physics and cosmology, focusing on observational tests of fundamental physics. With Stephen Hawking, he developed the Hawking-Turok instanton solutions describing the birth of inflationary universes. Most recently, with Paul Steinhardt at Princeton, he has been developing a cyclic model for cosmology, according to which the big bang is explained as a collision between two “brane-worlds” in M-theory. Steinhardt and Turok co-authored the popular science book “Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang”.
In October 2008, Dr. Turok assumed the position of Executive Director at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.
Born in South Africa, Dr. Turok founded the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS). Based in Cape Town, this postgraduate educational centre supports the development of mathematics and science across the African continent. AIMS recruits students from all over Africa for an intensive nine month course which is taught by outstanding international lecturers. The course builds research skills through exposure to cutting-edge topics. AIMS graduates proceed to advanced programmes in a wide range of scientific fields, and to careers in education, industry or government. They form a powerful network working together for African development.
For his work with AIMS and his many contributions to theoretical physics, Dr. Turok was recently awarded a prestigious TED (Technology, Education, Design) Prize. In accepting the prize, Dr. Turok expressed his dream that the next Einstein will be African, and his plan to create AIMS institutes across Africa.